Drunk as Drunk
by arwenthemuse
Summary: some Helen/James feels inspired by a couple of Pablo Neruda's poems: "Drunk as Drunk" and Sonnet XVI "I love the handful of the earth you are" . Strong T/M - the usual. "His Helen has strong shoulders and rough hands, a sharp tongue and sharper mind. She is a world all her own, mountains and valleys and quakes and whirlwinds all within her being."


**A/N: **There are few things I would not give for some serious critique on this, since it's a huge stylistic deviation from me. Call it an exercise with prompts - in this case, my attempt to build a fic around the framework of the aforementioned poems rather than digging in and demonstrating my thoughts about characters.

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It's less gracious, more needful, when they peel layers of wet clothing off of each other. Yet, when he captures her mouth again, flesh on flesh, all the fight wears out of him and is replaced by an overwhelming sense of relief. She's his, she's safe, and when they guide each other, weary passengers, into the bed, their bodies are one.

When he departs from her, his body rises over hers and he passes his attentions across her form - the valley between her breasts, the angry plains of her stomach as her lungs heave in gasps and moans under his searching touch. She's his, pale earth, strong and damp, and her abdomen tenses when he kisses her belly, relaxes again slowly while he slides, moist flesh catching on moist flesh, up to blanket her again. He swallows her kisses and finds himself intoxicated, twining his fingers with hers as shadow passes into night, leaving them with nary a candle to combat the darkness that floods through the window. It doesn't matter, because he knows her, and the glint of her eyes in the falling darkness is a northern light until even those eyes dim in the consuming darkness.

He is unconcerned by their absence, however: he has more senses than his sight. Her breath shuddering in her breast, her knees bending against him, a gasp catching in her throat, are all the more organic. And god, oh god, she's the center of his being and she's his absinthe, and the heady way she mumbles his name into his mouth tells him that she too is intoxicated on the drift of their caresses, on their two beings converging upon each other in the darkness.

"Don't go," he rasps later, so much later, and her head tilts to gaze at the ceiling, lips parted, parched, but she does not go. She lays in the wake of his affections as sunlight blooms across her body. She'll be consumed by the rapidly rising sun in a moment, and he'll no longer be able to drink her in. He leaves her body long enough to locate the blankets, pull them over their heads, shift to her other side with his head tilted to capture a dry, salty kiss on the way, waylaying the assault of daylight.

His name is a breath on her lips, and he mumbles his pleasure into her mouth.

"Don't go. Don't go," is a crack in the silence at noon. _Helen_ and _Don't Go_are the only words he knows to speak. Out of the blankets, into trousers. He returns to care for complaining stomachs and throats - a few slices of bread, fruit, a pot of tea. She is dozing when he enters, but bares a smile to him when he seats himself upon the bed stirring her tea, two sugars to combat the bitterness. They partake in silence and he prepares to do away with their mess, but her hand stops him and, as she pulls him down, her kisses intoxicate him again. The platter remains at the bedside, forsaken, as he leans into her.

Whether they bed down again for hours or days he does not know, but when reality sinks in upon them with the dawning of another new day, she pushes herself aright, and he regretfully releases her.

Helen glows; James stares.

It's not something he means to do, but he cannot help himself. Not after nights and days of love. Not in the light of a dawn that seems somehow more welcoming, more welcome, than the last. Not as it casts shadows across the curves of her body. Each shadow deserves to be studied, for the artistry of dawn and for Helen. He drinks her in with eyes that trace the slope of her shoulders, the curve of her breasts, the bend of her hip. The light that kisses her left side becomes her in the gentlest, most deceiving of ways; the softness is mere artifice. His Helen has strong shoulders and rough hands, a sharp tongue and sharper mind. She's gentle too, yes, but she is no delicate flower, as the cast of light over pale, smooth flesh would lead a lesser man to believe. James knows better. She is a world all her own, mountains and valleys and quakes and whirlwinds all within her being. She is a world all her own, and the sea within her could draw a compass away from due north.

When not words, but a quiet hum draw his eyes from her figure up to her face, he still knows better. She is groggy with her awakening and drunk on his gaze, but this morning is different, and the satisfied smile is dangerous in the most ambrosial way. "Good morning," eases carefully into the air, breaking the silence, and her smile broadens in the wake of his voice.

"Good morning," she murmurs back, and the smile is not only on her lips and in her eyes, but also in her voice. He pushes himself aright to greet her, where brows and noses touch before, with all due affection, her lips brush his in the chastest of kisses. He understands, but she still has to be the reasonable one. "We both have duties to attend," has a somberness not present in her waking.

He strokes her cheek and kisses her again, then again on the brow, as if two nights - or five, or twelve, or a mere few hours - navigating, drunk, at the very ends of the earth, are indeed the dream he fears they may be. But Helen, too, knows better, and the grip of her hand when she twines her fingers with his is familiar. Their clothes and the tray from the kitchen remain where he distantly remembers abandoning them. "Helen?"

"Darling." Her brow rocks against his. "Later." One word alone contains a promise and a question, a command and a plea.


End file.
